The Identity Theory And Contemporary Reconstruction Of Marxist Mental Concept

Mind-body problem is a hot and difficult problem in philosophy of mind, which concerns mental states' essence as well as the relationship between mental states and physical states. According to the contemporary identity theory's ideas, mental states such as thinking, believing, hoping and feeling as a matter of fact turn out to be identical to physical states and processes (more definitely, they are nervous systems or just brain states and processes) and they are identical things. Therefore, having a thought is identical with some cells in some states and other cells in other states. This is a more radical form in ontology transformation of contemporary philosophy of mind, which provides grounds and proofs for the basic materialistic principle of "there is nothing in the world except matter" from a specified angle and leads us think the problem of "in which sense human have mental?" On the base of analyzing the identity theory's developing history and its basic thoughts, probing emphatically into the two main types of the type-type identity theory and the token-token identity theory, absorbing its especially token-token identity theory's rational thoughts, making use of the latest research achievements of the brain science, rereading the Marxist-Leninist classics, this article holds that the world is a united material world and only matter is the thing-in itself, but in modern times, we can't abandon the mental language immediately.This article has five sections. In the first section, the author presents the materialistic identity theory's developing history, dividing four stages and inspecting their characteristic respectively. In the second section, the author elaborates the type-type identity theory's representative figures and their basic thoughts. Generally speaking, this theory holds that mental states' type is identical with the physical states or the nerve centre states' type. In the third section, the author analyses the difficult position faced by the type-type identity theory and discusses the token-token identity theory especially Davidson's basic thoughts.